Expanding the Horizontal Call: A Typology of Social Influence on the Call to Ministry

Abstract

This research examines the social actors and interactions that facilitate seminary students'sense of calling. Drawing from 36 in-depth interviews with first year Masters of Divinity students, we introduce six ideal typical social others who play a formative role in the early stages of a call to ministry: instigators, exemplars, interpreters, affirmers, challengers, and codiscerners. Together, these findings demonstrate that the call to ministry, while deeply personal, emerges through social interactions that facilitate and make plausible a person's sense of calling and that sustain it over time. Extending Richard Pitt's conceptualization of the "horizontal call," this paper argues that social others help evoke and solidify-not merely legitimate-a personal sense of call. This research also highlights differences in the social structuring of call by gender. Despite considerable gains in the ordination of women, we find that many still face obstacles to experiencing and embracing a call to ministry.

When God Calls: Temporality in Southern Baptist Calls to Missions

“…Previous research has identified common narrative elements in descriptions of calls along with significant variation in how recipients present their callings (Johnston and Eagle 2023; Pitt 2012). However, how these elements are combined to construct coherent self-presentations that resonate with cultural expectations, along with the underlying logics that constrain possible combinations, remains underexplored.…”

“…In his analysis of Black Pentecostal ministers’ calls, Pitt (2012) distinguishes between the vertical call, God’s direction of the believer toward a particular vocation, and the horizontal call, the community’s subsequent affirmation or rejection. Building on this framework, Johnston and Eagle (2023) have argued that the horizontal call is influential not just in legitimating call experiences, but in evoking and reinforcing the individual’s sense of call.…”

“…Call narratives are composed of various standard elements whose familiarity makes them resonate with audiences (Naidu and Nzuza 2013; Steeves 2017). Previous research has identified considerable variation in how individuals combine these elements to articulate both the vertical and horizontal call (Johnston and Eagle 2023; Pitt 2012). Callees may describe God’s action as an out-of-the-blue, pinpointable experience or as a gentle nudging without clear beginning or end.…”